Archive for the 'Family Business Quarterly' Category

In this hyper-connected world, our aim must be to create a home environment that corrects error or poor choices with compassion and respect for all individuals involved. Parents often confuse correcting their child, with judging them – which is fear expressing condemnation. How does your family culture value the individual? Is it safe to express a dissenting point of view? Are the quirks and foibles of your children ridiculed or explored and treasured? How is your family culture preparing your child to deal with groupthink in the world?

Teaching our children that liberty already belongs to the soul is the most important thing a parent can do for the modern child so they can learn how to become free agents in the social network and in the flesh.

A seminal U.S. history learning moment for me happened in the third grade and continues to echo in my mind. It is the battle cry for American liberty attributed to John Paul Jones: “Give me liberty or give me death!” And I can remember thinking “what kind of liberty would warrant dying for it?” Being born in a free society, it is easy to take for granted the civil liberties we enjoy for which so many past and present sacrifices are made to preserve and protect. More importantly, this battle for American liberty is easily confused with a simple act of rebellion rather than as a drumbeat of God’s love, which is merciful, sacrificial and offers the hope of grace and mercy in all of the affairs of humanity.

According to my husband, a veteran Pediatrician, the strong light can reset a person’s internal sleep clock. Does this mean that we should refrain from using any of these electronics after 9 p.m. at night?

...We and our children can get educated about our own resilience at all ages to recognize evil for evil, and good for good; for it is through trial, error and our faith that we as individuals and families have the capacity to overcome undue influences and experiences in our own cyber and physical realms of the world. So in my mind, the more fundamental concern is how the technology is impacting parents who are the primary teachers for life.

Welcome to the 2014 Fall Edition of Banana Moments Family Business Quarterly

Joanna Jullien(Photo: Christi Benz)

A recent Mashable article features a young man who made the choice to drop out of school and pursue a career as a professional video game player and then stunned his parents by earning enough money to pay the rent, other bills and have a little left over for some luxuries. For now, this is a career that …

Parental control settings have limited value, more like the training wheels on a bike. Before long the child will master the device and the controls. Parental controls have value as instructive ways to engage and maintain an ongoing dialog with the child about purpose-driven use of the cyber tools.
When the use of parental controls are perceived as training wheels to help the child develop their own self control essential to be secure in the network, the signal conveyed to the child is one of confidence in their ability to become a responsible user. And so the aim of parenting with parental controls is to prepare the child to be in control, and for the parent to monitor in age-appropriate ways.

It helps to be clear that the conversation with your child is not about you; it is about the child learning how to take command over their own life and you are the primary teacher. You may draw upon your own experience, but do not allow the conversation to digress into your adolescence and childhood. The idea here is to encourage your child to seek conversations with you about how to apply virtues in their life so you can encourage them to seek Wisdom (James 1:5) from the Lord and impart your wisdom.

On Tues. Oct. 21 and again on Oct. 22, Rocklin resident Peggy Harper Lee , author of Spoiled: Fresh Ideas for Parenting Your Entitled Child at Any Age (2012) , will be speaking at St. Joseph Marello Catholic Church in Granite Bay about the skills to overcome the power and discipline issues with children of all ages.
Lee, a mother of five ages 32 to five, developed the material for her book from her financial consulting practice. She found that many of her client’s financial issues were related to the expenses associated with entitled children of all ages. “Parents today are from the ‘achievement’ generation,” she said, “And so there is a tendency to blur the parenting and child lanes in order to accomplish personal goals.” The net impact can be the formation of a disabling dependency wherein children depend on someone else to be responsible for their lot in life, which is compounded by the network culture that features instant gratification centered on self. Some examples include failure to launch, as adult children lack the motivation to find a way to make it on their own; and expectations that parents will pay for the desires the child cannot afford or for which he is not willing to work; to resistance and hostile reactions to expectations to helping around the house and doing homework.

Fresh Start training, introduced by Banana Moments Foundation, teaches parents the fundamentals of creating a family culture to function more like a sanctuary from the cyber social storm, wherein children feel safe to come home and talk about their experiences on and off line, and then parents can impart wisdom and teach discipline.

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The objective of Banana Moments (click here to receive updates) is to help parents rise above the noise and the fray of the daily, weekly, monthly press of information and life’s stresses of family business. Banana Moments offers insights and inspiration to reinforce your own family values and help you lead children in this network culture that pressures all of us with things that don’t really matter and are largely not true.

About Joanna Jullien

Joanna (jullien@surewest.net) and her husband have raised two sons in Roseville, CA. She has a degree from U.C. Berkeley in Social Anthropology (corporate culture). Her honors thesis was awarded the Kroeber Prize and funding from National Science Foundation grant. Joanna writes to help parents with the modern-day leadership challenges of raising children. She is a contributing writer for The Granite Bay View, the Press Tribune, the Sacramento Examiner, and editor of Banana Moments.